The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the family of a student who died while using laughing gas have settled a suit filed by the family and charging MIT with ignoring drug abuse in its dormitories, according to an Associated Press report. The article said that MIT has agreed to create a fund to pay for additional orientation programs.A student at Benedictine University and a student at the College of DuPage have been charged with beating a University of Illinois at Chicago stud

Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives Education and the Workforce Committee said Monday that they would propose legislation Wednesday that would prohibit the U.S. Education Department from creating a new "unit record" database because it would use "private, personally identifiable information" to track students' academic progress.

Some of the world's leading research universities plan a new cooperative venture in which they will share faculty members and students and build what its leaders call a "global partnership."Details about the arrangement are vague -- so vague, in fact, that officials at the two American institutions planning to be involved, Yale and the University of California at Berkeley, aren't ready to talk about it yet.

Growing up in a moderate income area near San Diego, Arnold Cuenca had an interest in and aptitude for science in high school. But as he contemplated potential careers, he, like most of his peers, was encouraged to enter the military or take a job right out of high school -- paths most of his peers chose. His mom was a nurse, though, and that got him thinking about being a doctor."Other than my mom, I had nothing to encourage me to become a health professional -- I didn't know what medicine was," says Cuenca.

As financial markets improved, selective private colleges saw their cash and investments increase faster than their operating budgets in the 2004 fiscal year, reversing the pattern of the year before. But except at the very top tier of institutions, the colleges' debt rose even faster, as they poured money into expanding and renovating facilities, Standard & Poor's said in a report released this month.

California's Legislature overwhelmingly approved budget legislation Thursday that would lift spending on education programs to their highest level ever and generally satisfy officials of the state's three college and university systems in 2005-6. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who reached an agreement with legislative leaders on a budget deal on Tuesday, is expected to sign the measure early next week.